Yeah, for the first time I had to send more than 3 applications this year.

I guess it’s time to bring me to the farm

That is survivorship bias though. Maybe you had like 5 opportunities and got three jobs. If they hadn't worked out, finding the 6th would be way harder.

For those pigeons where there are no holes, it instead seems impossible.

As someone approaching 50, coding since the age of 10, started doing side gigs at the age of 14, such success rate is very uncommon.

My success rate was absolutely terrible during the dotcom crash. After that I've increasingly relied on intermediary recruiters to find me work. They're clearly much better at that than I am. So these days I get asked and I reject them.

maybe you aren't stretching far enough. if you apply for jobs you are absolutely qualified for, obviously you'll get them. it's probably worth some effort to get a ~30% more difficult job with 30% more pay for most people.

I quite liked jobs that I was qualified for. But then I became too qualified and too experienced.

I never had much problem with applications in the last, but in the last job search it was futile. I’m still just now getting rejections from jobs I applied to months ago which seem a perfect fit for my resume.

I even applied to a place I worked a ~5 years ago, which I got via cold application. Apparently I’m not good enough anymore because I couldn’t get past the filters.

I finally found a job through a referral. Oddly, it was working with tech I have basically no experience in and probably had the most awkward interview out of all the ones I ended up doing.